During the past two years, I have been consumed with finding out about my past. I wanted to know stories of long lost ancestors. Who they were, what they were like as people. What country did they come from--just any and everything I could find out. What I really craved was the stories about their lives.
I can write stories about my life, my children's, grandchildren to a point, parents, grandparents, great grandparents and then the stories get sketchy at best. That leaves hundreds of relatives, whose blood I carry and know virtually nothing about. I don't want these people to be forgotten. Although I am afraid most will be. I am trying to write a collection of stories, that are facts about ancestors I never knew. Each thing I learn is exciting to me.
Melodi has been doing all the hard work. She is very interested in this and has found most of the facts and I intend to write the stories. She has traced my father's side of the family back to 1581. And is in the process of tracing both mine and Tommy's family ancestry. She has run into a dead end on Tommy's side but she did get to the 1600"s. They have a lot of Indian blood and the records aren't as clear or have been lost.
Most of things we find are dates of marriages, births, deaths and an occasional picture or a story. This is how we pieced together one such family member. His name was Rowland Stone. Both names came from his parents. His father was named William Stone and his mother was Jane Rolland. That was a common practice in those days, to give the son the mother's maiden name as his first name. It is still a common practice in the South, especially among the wealthy.
It appears that Rowland was born on Aug. 1,1764 in Londonary, Ireland. He states that he was brought to America---Pennsylvania to be exact, about 3 years before the Revolution and lived in Pennsylvania for 5 years. He moved to South Carolina during the Revolution. He was drafted there and became a part of State Militia of South Carolina towards the end of August 1780. Which according to my calculations made him 16. He served under Capt. Samuel Rosamond. Their mission to supply and protect Northwards Mills on the Saluda River. He served 7 months and continued to live in South Carolina for more than 30 years. After that, for some reason Rowland moved to Tennessee and lived there for another 20 years.
Somehow, somewhere during this time, Rowland met and married Elizabeth Miller, who was originally from Scotland. All I know about her, are her life and death dates--1777-1853. I wonder if they had children. As far as I know none were listed. I would love to know when they met--how they met. Was it during the war or afterwards? Did they marry as teenagers or later in life. All I know for sure is that somewhere in Rowland's 81 years, his named was changed from "Rowland Stone" to "Rolling Stone". I wonder if it was because he moved around a lot or because he had a little bit of "old hippie" in him even then. I hope it came from a good sense of humor instead of a typo made years ago.
Until I can find out more, I am going to believe that "Rolling" and Elizabeth were gypsies at heart. That they had a good life together and traveled across the mountains always in search of the next adventure. I am sure their life was hard and scary at times. It was all unsettled land. They had to battle for everything they ever had. I hope at the end of their lives, they thought it had all been worth it.
Who knows, maybe Rolling had a verse rambling around in his head that always made him look for more than what he had. It might have even gone something like "I Can't get no Satisfaction" We will probably never know, but I think it would be cool if he did.
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